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Urban Terror
Urban Terror, commonly abbreviated as , is a free multi-player first person shooter game developed by FrozenSand. Originally a total conversion of id Software's Quake III Arena, FrozenSand released Urban Terror as a free standalone game in 2007 utilizing ioquake3 as an engine. Although the ioquake3 project uses id Software's id Tech 3 engine under GPL license, Urban Terror's assets and code are closed source. Urban Terror was nominated to the 2007 Mod DB's Mod of the Year Award. History Urban Terror started out in 1998 as a planned mappack for Quake III Arena, in which real world environments would be featured. It expanded from this idea to a full total conversion featuring realistic weapons and gameplay similar to Action Quake 2. Silicon Ice Development was formed in spring 2000 and was made of several international developers, many whom were familiar with modifying Quake III Engine games; hence progress was made quickly. When its first version, beta 1.0, was released at QuakeCon 2000, Urban Terror was the realism mod with the most features and graphics completed. Beta 1.0 gained popularity quickly, and many third party maps became available. The development team was expanded, and beta 1.27 was released in late 2000. Beta 2.0 was released in June 2001, and was a major leap forward in terms of production quality. New textures, models, weapons, sounds, and maps brought the mod up to par with many contemporary commercial games of the time. The next major release occurred in August 2001, at QuakeCon 2001, of beta 2.3, which introduced several new maps. The last release for the beta 2 series occurred in January 2003, with beta 2.6a being primarily a weapons balancing patch. August 2003 saw the release of beta 3.0, a major graphical revision of Urban Terror. Over the next 11 months, seven more updates were released, culminating in beta 3.7 in July 2004. Work on Urban Terror for Quake III Arena slowed down, as Silicon Ice Development was working on a release for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, titled Urban Terror MX featuring new vehicles and gameplay. During this period, Silicon Ice Development changed its name to FrozenSand. Urban Terror MX never reached alpha stage, and the project was canceled in 2006. With the release of the ID Tech 3 engine source code, Urban Terror could legally be released as a standalone game. Urban Terror beta 4.0 was released in April 2007 using the ioquake3 project engine. Urban Terror is now a standalone game. Beta 4.0 ushered in another graphical overhaul, several new maps, and numerous tweaks and bug fixes. The popularity of Urban Terror surged as Quake III Arena was no longer required in order to play. Urban Terror beta 4.1 was released in December 2007, with 4.1.1 being released in January 2011. On 25 December 2010 the Urban Terror HD Alpha 0.1 test was publicly released, featuring a new engine, new weapons, maps and characters. Urban Terror 4.2 beta was released on August 4, 2012. Gameplay Urban Terror is billed by FrozenSand as a "Hollywood tactical shooter." It blends elements from games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, and Warsow. The realism in the mod is introduced through a number of changes: The number of weapons and other gear that can be carried is limited. Damage is also more realistic than in Quake III Arena, based on dividing the player target into discrete areas. Depending on the map being played, external environments are realistic and can include weather effects such as rain or snow. Weather effects can also be controlled by game variables via administrator privileges. Urban Terror allows players to perform superhuman feats. Damage is a key example; while damage taken depends on the part of the body which is hit, one can keep going after receiving numerous hits. Further breaking from reality, Urban Terror also retains the movement speeds from Quake III Arena (circle jumping) which allowed players to move through the environment incredibly quickly and includes moves such as wall jumping and power sliding. Wall jumping allows players to literally jump off of walls and helps the player to gain more height, distance and speed. Power sliding lets the player slide, rapidly, in a crouched position, maintaining speed. These abilities have spawned a sub-community of players who focus on specially designed "jump maps" of which the goal is to reach the end of a series of difficult courses. Numerous game modes are featured, including classic FPS modes such as Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. Also included are Team Survivor, Free-for-All (deathmatch), Bomb & Defuse, Capture & Hold, and Follow the Leader. Urban Terror 4.2 has brought two additional game types: Last Man Standing, and Jump Mode (a special mode for the aforementioned jump maps). Damage and stamina Damage registration in Urban Terror is done by dividing the player target into six discrete areas: head, torso, groin/butt, arms, legs, lower legs. The effects on the torso and head can be reduced by game items such as the kevlar vest and the kevlar helmet, respectively. In addition to the damage system, wounds require bandaging, and wounds sustained in the legs slow the player down considerably until they are bandaged. When a wound is not bandaged, the player will eventually slowly die from bleeding to death. Players can also bandage each other to partially restore health. The bandaging process is much faster if the player that is bandaging is equipped with a medkit item, which is used for healing other players to nearly full health. A player carrying the medkit can also be healed back to nearly full health by other players, but the healing acceleration is not available in this case. A stamina system is also present, and is depleted by jumping, crouching, sliding, and sprinting. The amount of stamina is related to the amount of health a player has. Equipping or picking up a kevlar vest decreases stamina by half. Stamina is recharged fastest when a player is motionless (crouching is not necessary), but will recharge slowly even during normal movement (running/walking). There is not now, nor has there ever been a weight system in Urban Terror; wearing kevlar armor cuts stamina in half, but stamina is otherwise unaffected by gear. Community Anti-cheating technologies Originally, Urban Terror (as a Quake III Arena mod) used the PunkBuster anti-cheating technology built into Quake III Arena. As PunkBuster does not support modified versions of the ID Tech 3 engine, the standalone version of Urban Terror 4.1 relies on public cheater list (UAA, urtadmins.com). Version 4.2 uses a new game account system, that allows to enforce the cheater ban policy consequently and adds cheat detection. External links *Urban Terror official website *Frozen Sand LLC *Urban Terror official YouTube channel *Urban Terror engine sourcecode Category:Urban Terror